Topic: Miller's Breakdown

[frankie]

Look what I found!
The man himself playing the A7, D9 rocking chords (about 2:00).

Well spotted!

Here's Eugene Powell using the same move at around 1:20:

[frankie]

I'm obviously just taking this opportunity to post Eugene Powell videos...

here again at about 0:26:

[One-Eyed Ross]

I'm obviously just taking this opportunity to post Eugene Powell videos...

You say that like it's a bad thing....

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I've been transcribing the lyrics to "Hollandale Blues" and "She's My Baby" at:  http://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=10188.msg93119#msg93119 .  I'm not at all sure I have a couple of Sam's spoken comments in "Hollandale Blues" right, and would appreciate some help with that, or any place else you think I got it wrong.  Thanks!
All best,
Johnm

[Blues Vintage]

Watched the Hollandale Blues vid again and noticed that his birthday is being given (grave marker) as jan. 10, 1899. From my own memory I thought is was 1897. Looked it up in various blues books and they all came up with the jan. 10, 1897 date....

[One-Eyed Ross]

It wasn't uncommon for birth dates/years in those days to be confused.  My maternal grandmother, for example, had three different birth years (1907, 1909, 1911).  In my father's family, the only record of births was in my grandmother's bible, and even then, the birthdays were crossed off and changed. 

This was before required birth registration in many states, so "best guess" is sometimes all we can get, absent baptismal records of the Catholic church. 

[Blues Vintage]

I was busy to transcribe the exact lyrics of She's My Baby myself. I thought I heard;

Every time that woman takes me.....

Instead of

Every time that woman touch me....

But touch makes more sense. It's probably Sam's accent.

[Johnm]

Hi all,
A couple of people have expressed interest in reminiscences on Sam Chatmon, so here goes:

I met Sam Chatmon through Nick Perls, who founded Yazoo Records and Blue Goose Records.  Nick was the first Country Blues fan I'm aware of that fully recognized what an ace musician Bo Carter was, and who did not discount Bo for recording so much party material.  This was soon after I had met Nick, around 1973 or a little later, at which point I had already recorded my first Blue Goose album.  I was very much into Bo Carter's music, to the point of obsession.  At the same time, I had some stuff wrong--I was playing all of Bo's songs that he played in DGDGBE tuning in Spanish tuning because I'd never heard of DGDGBE tuning, and it never occurred to me to use such a tuning.  Nick wanted to get me together with Sam because I played so much of Bo's repertoire and was into his music so deeply.  He played some of my recordings of Bo's material for Sam, and arranged for me to come down to New York City while Sam was there, staying with Nick.
When I met Sam, I was very excited, which is an understatement.  It was a thrill to meet the brother of one of my idols.  Sam was very cordial, and I started to play some of Bo's tunes for Sam.  I tell this to give some idea of the type of person Sam was.  After the first number he said, "You sure can pick like Bo!", after the second he said, "If I was in another room and I heard you playing, I couldn't tell if it was you or Bo.", after the third, he said, "As long as you are living, Bo Carter will not be dead.", and he wound up with, "You are Bo Carter!"  Throughout this whole time, I was escalating in excitement, but after Sam's last compliment, something switched for me.  I realized that here Sam was, a really fine musician and singer (I prefer his singing to Bo's) in his own right, over 70 years old, and I didn't want to act as though Sam had nothing to offer of his own, and was only of interest as a conduit to his late brother.  From that point onward, I just stopped talking about Bo to Sam, and indeed, except when we played music, I hardly discussed music with him, sticking more to life matters--his family, jobs that he had had, dogs he had owned, his life growing up, etc.
Sam was very grandfatherly to me, and had lots of advice and life lessons.  He told me that when I got married, I would "have a treasure", and that has pretty much turned out to be the case, though I certainly don't think of my wife as a possession.  Sam told me, "I love women, but I'm not crazy about them.", by which I took him to mean that he wouldn't make a fool of himself for anybody.  He complained about the name of the product Pepto Bismol, because he couldn't pronounce it, and said, "Why they want to call it that?"  I remember a joke he told:  A man goes into a general store and asks the clerk for some Mountain Brothers Coffee.  The clerk said, "We don't have any, but we have some Hills Brothers Coffee.", to which the man responded, "I knew it was something tall."
Sam picked with all five fingers and didn't anchor his right hand, and said Bo played the same way.  His performing repertoire was just as raunchy as Bo's, but he wasn't notably lecherous. I think his attitude, as was Bo's, probably, was "Give the people what they want."  Sam was of very temperate life habits:  he wasn't particularly interested in food, most of the time being happy with a ham sandwich.  If he took a beer, he would be likely to drink half of the bottle, leave the remainder on his night table and drink it the next day.  Sam was also extremely together in terms of things related to life skills and taking care of himself and being a responsible performer.  He carried a needle and thread in his guitar case in case he needed to do some mending, band aids, and an extra watch in case his watch broke!  I fully recognized how untogether and scattered I was by comparison.
One thing I didn't realize about Sam when I first met him was that he had close to total recall.  About six to eight months after I met him, we were booked to do a split bill concert at Harpur College in Binghamton, New York, in the winter.  I drove down from Ithaca, New York where I lived and found the student who had booked the show and asked if Sam had arrived yet.  He told me that Sam had arrived, and directed me to the dorm room where he was currently resting.  I was a little apprehensive about seeing Sam after the intervening months and wondered if he would remember me, with him being an older man.  I shouldn't have worried.  When I knocked on the dorm room, and the student opened the door, Sam looked up from the bed where he was sitting and said, "There's my partner!"  In talking with him then, I found that he not only remembered me, he remembered virtually everything we had ever said to each other, asking me about things I had not remembered discussing with him earlier.  As an example, he said, "Are you still in that band?"  I hadn't remembered mentioning to him that I was in a Bluegrass band called Country Cooking, but he remembered.  I remember a young woman asking Sam if he wanted to go on a walk, and he said, "No you go on, honey, it wouldn't be seemly for an old man like me to be seen walking with a young girl like you."  I suppose the fact that it was brutally cold outside may have been a consideration, too.

I recorded a couple of tunes with Sam, but they were never released.  We did "Twist It, Babe", and I remember when it came time for me to solo, Sam hollered, "Oh, play it, John!"  I wish I had a copy of that recording.  I do feel fortunate to have met Sam at all, but at the same time, I feel more fortunate for having made the connection to Sam the person, as opposed to Sam the musician.  It's always been that way for me when I meet older musicians--before I meet them, i'm more interested in their music, but once I meet them, the music recedes and I'm much more interested in them as people.  Maybe I just don't want to be a dopey fan.

When I read some of the quotes attributed to Sam from later in his life, I think that he possibly gauged his statements to what he perceived to be the credulity of the person he was talking to.  He would never have made the statement about Bo playing in only a couple of keys to me, because he knew that I knew it was not so.  It may be, too, that as Sam got older and more musicians died off, he was inclined to take more credit for things than he did when more of his colleagues were still living.  One thing he did say about Bo was that he went blind all at once, around 1930, and that Sam attributed it to Bo having been poisoned in some way, or cursed.  Certainly, we'll never know.

Sam had a complex, sort of "outsider's" sense of racial identity.  He sang a song that the Sheiks recorded, but which was never released, I believe, called "The Yellow Coon Has No Race", and also "I Have To Paint My Face", "to change myself from this Ethiopian race".  Where he came from, he was considered black, by white people, but he didn't feel black like darker black people, or identify with their life experience.

Well, I guess that is enough for now.  I feel very fortunate to have met Sam and been befriended by him.  He was concerned with my welfare, I believe, in a long-term sense, and tried to help and guide me as much as he could, and I appreciate his generosity in doing that, and treasure the memories I have of him and who he was and the time we spent together.

All best,
Johnm       
     

[Prof Scratchy]

Thanks for sharing those memories, John. He sounds like the wonderful man that he comes across as on the videos of him playing and talking. It must have quite an experience to have got to know him so closely. One piece of new information for me was the bit about Bo going blind suddenly in 1930 or thereabouts. I'd never thought of Bo as a blind musician, although I've read that when researchers found him in the 1960s he was blind and had suffered a bad stroke. I'd just assumed it was the stroke in later life that had made Bo blind. Thanks again for those reminiscences.

[ScottN]

Hi John - I too wanted to thank you for sharing your memories of Mr. Chatmon with us.

On the lyrics to Hollandale I only have a couple minor suggestions:

V2 spoken "sell" vs "set" all that whiskey

V6 - dropped "out" vs dropped "down"

V7.1 - "I always" vs just "always"


Thanks again for sharing,
                                     Scott

[Slack]

Thanks for sharing those Johnm! - what terrific memories! 

...and he wound up with, "You are Bo Carter!"

That's really funny... I'm not sure I'd heard this entire sequence before.

I assume Sam was married at some point, did he ever talk about a wife?

[Blues Vintage]

Thanks John.

Lotta cool anecdotes. Never heard of a man who carries a extra watch around. 

[Old Man Ned]

Just like to add my thanks too John, for sharing those memories.  It must have been wonderful to make such a connection.  Thanks again.

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I'm glad folks are enjoying the memories.  John D., Sam was married, at least once, and I think more than once.  And I think he was married when I knew him.
I know what you mean about not thinking of Bo as a blind player, Allan, but if Sam's recollection of the onset of Bo's blindness was correct, than Bo would have been blind during the most active period of his solo recording career.
Thanks for the lyric fix suggestions, Scott.  I took them all except for "dropped out" rather than "dropped down", just because the phrase "dropped down" had a lot of use among people of Sam's generation, whereas "dropped out" came along much later.  I think Sam was a little adenoidal, and "dropped down" ended up sounding kind of like "dropped out".  I made the other changes, thanks.
All best,
Johnm

[EddieD]

Great stories John. Thanks for sharing. It was a great read this afternoon.